


Batfam Takes Gotham

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen, So many tags, collection of tumblr prompt flash fics, did i forget anyone, major tonal changes, mostly under 1500 words each, not part of CEC, unconnected to each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 17:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10541331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Collection of the shorter tumblr prompts/ask responses with various characters and themes. All gen or non-graphic.





	1. Tim and Tam

The bells attached to the top of the heavy metal door frame clanged noisily into the morning quiet as the door swung open and then shut. The scuff of sneakers worked across the room up to the counter, where she quietly ordered a cup of coffee from the barista.

Tim Drake-Wayne gave a small wave when she turned to scan the room. She nodded and her whole face brightened with a smile.

At the small booth, she sat next to him instead of across from him and he scooted down a little to make room.

“Gotta keep up appearances,” she said, sounding far from upset.

“Hey, Tam,” he smiled tiredly, and rolled his stiff and aching shoulder. It had tightened more since the last time he tried to move it and he winced, just barely.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Tim, you could have messaged me. We could have rescheduled.”

“It’s not that bad,” Tim says, meeting her deep brown eyes. “I’ll have Alfred look at it later.”

“Okay,” she said, a little reluctantly, spinning the glittering ring on her finger. “I mean, I know this is…I know it’s not real, Tim. But I do actually worry about you.”

“I know,” he said, leaning forward to snag a few sugar packets from the middle of the table. He handed them to her, already knowing she’d need them. “Thanks, Tam. Honestly. It means a lot.”

Tam accepted the sugar packets and tore them open and added them to her steaming cup of coffee. She stirred it with the spoon he held out next and then peered into his mug when she leaned over for a napkin.

“Is that…hot chocolate?” she asked suspiciously.

“You said it was good here,” he answered, sipping it and smiling. “You were right.”


	2. Jason, Damian, and Dick

The slate tiles were hot on his bare feet and Jason shifted his weight from one leg to the other in a dancing attempt at relief. He should have worn boots but he was worried they’d crack the roofing or be too slick.

“Where did you say you threw it?” he shouted down the three stories to the lawn, where Dick and Damian stood. They both looked angry-- Damian because the game had been interrupted just as he was beginning to take it seriously, Dick because Jason had beat him to the roof.

Dick, to be honest, would have been a better choice. Dick would have remembered the tiles would be hot.

But life was too short to dwell on minor inconveniences.

Damian yelled back something incomprehensible across the distance.

“The fuck?” Jason yelled back. He wouldn’t have cussed in front of an ordinary eleven year old, but Damian was Damian.

“LANGUAGE!” Dick shouted back, clearly enough.

Jason grumbled. It figured that would make it to his ears but not anything, you know, actually helpful.

“South library!” Damian screamed, looking every bit as irate as the volume suggested.

Jason spotted the frisbee within seconds once he was looking in the right direction. It was black and matched the tile too closely to see without some hint. He tiptoed across to it and threw it aimlessly back down without looking to see where it went. He was pleased to hear Dick exclaim, “Ow!” a second later.

The window across the roof was still open but the tile was now unbearably hot, so he tested the nearest stone ledge with his hand and swung down the face of the manor, one grip at a time. He dropped onto the blessedly cool grass and sighed.

“Hot?” Dick asked with a smirk, rubbing a red bump above his eyebrow.

“Hotter than hell,” Jason replied flippantly. “And I should–”

“You should know. You’ve made your point far more times than necessary,” Damian grumbled, spinning the frisbee in the air. “Let’s continue the game or I’m quitting.”

“A thank you would maybe go a long way, bird-breath,” Jason muttered back, rising to his feet and taking the frisbee. “Okay, go long.”

Damian ran.


	3. Cass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caution: Sad/Angst

There are many things Cassandra Cain can handle but this might not be one of them. She is a weapon, a polished and precise edge against the world, but there are some sorrows that cannot be trimmed away.

She sits for a long time watching the woman from a distance, letting others offer comfort. Cass cannot offer this-- she knows she is frightening, a masked and shrouded reminder of the city’s failure. And aside from that, what could she say? Words do not come easy but this is a situation beyond words and Cass has the wrong body, the wrong arms. She is a stranger and she is a weapon, she is paralyzed by the emotion that also mutes the woman.

They are both silent and they are alone, divided.

Eventually, Cass leaves. She makes her way back to the manor, silent to the core. This is not a time she wants Stephanie’s words or Tim’s attentive but sidelong company. Her heart is a torn thing, a tattered and ragged insult in the grief of the night. She wants someone who will understand so she goes to Him.

But she cannot go to Him.

What would she say? What could she mean with her hands or her face that would speak the brokenness inside? That would whisper her failure and her comprehension of it?

So she sits in the hallway in the plain clothes she changed into in the cave, the clothes that make her a person she does not deserve to be. She sits in the darkness with a darkness inside her, a black and hollow void that makes her skin wet and sour.

There is crying from her eyes, damp dripping from her chin, and He is the sort of man who can hear a thing like weeping even when it is hushed.

The door opens and he looks down at her, his own eyes bleary with sadness and sleep. He always has that sadness; it is why she came to him. Not wanting to add to it is why she stayed in the hall.

“Cassandra?” he asks, sitting next to her.

“The baby,” she says, and her body that is a controlled tool betrays her. It shakes against her will, a motion of falling off chilled rooftops and into gravelled alleyways, a thing that cannot be put into language. “There was a tiny one and I couldn’t save it.”

This is where Tim would jerk away and stay with her, but give his eyes and hands to other things. This is where Stephanie would hug her and words would pour out against Cass’ hurt that is only a small hurt compared to the woman’s hurt that she also carries, Steph’s language a waterfall against the rocks of the woman’s wailing.

But he wraps an arm around her, sitting beside her on the floor, and he is there and he is quiet. He is a tombstone, sturdy and remembering. Curled beneath his arm like a desperate bird, she makes his shirt wet with the pain that is hers and Gotham’s alike. A teardrop falls on her neck and she does not brush it away; it is a way that they are not alone, carried on threads of salt and knowing.

When she is not breaking but merely broken, he lifts her chin and in the darkness of the hallway there is something that pushes against the blackness she carries.

“We can’t save everyone,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” she insists. “I could be faster.”

“No,” he says sternly. “You’re just Cass. It’s enough. We can send the mother flowers and a card.”

“Flowers,” Cass says angrily, black and red at war within her, gone to fight with banners and spears. “Flowers are not a baby.”

“No,” he agrees. “But it helps to know we aren’t alone.”

And she nods as the armies of grief and fury go home, dividing her heart into pieces. They are not gone but they are calmed. He is right. He usually is.

“Flowers,” she repeats.

Curling yellow petals and silk green buds will not fix things, they will not be oxygen in dying lungs, but it does help to be not alone with the dying inside while you figure out how to go on alive without your world.

Cass knows.


	4. Dick and Tim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst

Fists thudded against the bag over and over and over again, until his arms were sore and sweat drenched his brow. Dick Grayson stretched his hands, massaging the knuckles, and then despite the burn in his muscles he began again.

Somewhere in the apartment, buried under a pile of clean but unfolded laundry and a pile of newspapers, was his phone. It would have been buzzing wildly but he’d turned it off, after sending quick texts to assure everyone he was okay, just tired.

Okay.

It was his twist on Bruce’s “I’m fine.”

Okay and his hand cracks against the sand bag.

Okay and his shoulder throbs from the repetitive impact.

Okay and he can close his eyes and see them falling.

Okay.

Dick doesn’t always let himself dwell on it but today, the calendar tells him it’s time to visit it again. He lets his mind turn it over, play it again.

The snap and the fall and the scream and the end.

The wet thud of bodies and the dry thud of his fists.

Again and again and again.

There is a cold and dark anger in him, a buried conflict that only escapes when he is losing his grip. And one way he keeps himself from losing his grip is by restricting himself to days like these, to anniversaries instead of lifetimes.

Across the apartment, a window slid open and he looked up. Then he returned to the workout that isn’t a workout: it’s a punishment.

“Go somewhere else, Tim,” he called out. He doesn’t have the energy to be cheerful or thoroughly mean.

“Babs said you aren’t answering even her calls,” Tim replied, shutting the window behind him.

“That’s a pretty clear ‘stay away’ signal,” Dick warned him.

“Yeah, but I listen well,” Tim said, leaning against the door jamb. “And it’s a bad day to be alone.”

Dick stopped hitting the bag, steadying it with one outstretched arm. He opened his mouth once, to snap at the kid, and instead found himself a step closer to the bag leaning his forehead against the cool, black vinyl.

“It’s been years,” he muttered. “I swore I wouldn’t be like Bruce. I promised myself.”

Tim was right next to the bag now, not touching or reaching for Dick because that had never been his thing. He’d wait for Dick to initiate contact or it would never happen at all. But his nearness was a kind of offer and Dick swallowed hard and shifted from the hanging bag to Tim.

“They’ll always be your parents,” Tim said quietly, as they stood in the workout space that wasn’t much more than a large closet. The mats crinkled under their feet, close together as Dick clung to his younger brother. He had hidden away from everyone to hide away from this, but his damn family was too good at seeking things and people out.

“I know,” Dick gulped. “But I don’t want to be haunted by them. I don’t want…their death is all I can see and I hate it. I hate it.”

His fingers tightened into fists again, pressed against Tim’s back, and it felt like the fury had to go somewhere but there was nowhere for it to go. This is why he’d been beating the shit out of something for an hour.

“Let’s talk,” Tim said, stepping out of Dick’s embrace and tugging his elbow. “C’mon. Let’s make those cheap noodles Alfred hates and you can tell me something else about them.”

Dick wiped sweat and tears off his face with one hand. He took in a deep breath and glanced at the bag. He wanted so much to hit it again, to hit it again and again and then carry it out onto the street and break face after face the whole night long.

But Tim was already across the apartment, the clank of spoons and bowls and a metal pot like bells as he moved around in the kitchen, and the offer of listening was like a balm on a festering burn.

They fell when he closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes, he could see the apartment. He could see Tim, dark hair falling over a pale brow as he frowned at the instructions on a crinkling packet of ramen.

They laughed inside him, they spun and flew and soared through the air. She sang him to sleep and he lifted him onto shoulders; they chatted to the elephants and shared a bar of chocolate under the stars on a warm night.

Dick put a hand against the bag.

He looked at his reddened hands.

He joined Tim in the kitchen, leaned his hip against the counter, and began to talk.


	5. Jason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst

There was a time when Jason Todd swore to himself that he’d never be an addict.

He would never, he promised himself when he was seven and eating stale saltines on a cracked linoleum floor and blocking out the sounds from the other room with loud singing, shove poison into his veins.

He would never, he vowed to himself when he was nine and sitting on a fire escape with his arms wrapped around his legs shivering in the early spring frost, sniff or swallow or snort cheap solutions to his problems. This, while sucking in nicotine and letting smoke drift from his nostrils because at least the cigarette glowed against the dawn and reminded him that things could be warm.

But those promises died with him when he was fifteen years old and if there’s anything that didn’t die it was a cornerstone of his existence: Jason Todd was a failure.

With a lighter in his pocket and a mask over his face, he broke jaws with his fists and the surge of anger that flooded his brain each time was the first taste of his drug of choice.

Brass and knives and semi automatics, that’s what little addicts are made of.

The fury, it hunted him, calling like a siren in the night across lonely apartment bedrooms and bar counters and open stretches of midnight road. It whispered his name and lured him into the shattering of bones and the ripping of skin and the spilling of guts onto concrete.

Blood smelled hot and sweet and mixed with his bile when he glared around him in the aftermath, each time, the anger wearing deep grooves in the pathways of his mind but fleeing him as soon as it was satisfied.

But it was never satisfied for long.

And that’s how he knew he was an addict after all.

It kept coming back for him, dragging at him, aching in his joints and his stomach with the need of it and consuming his thoughts until there was nothing left of him but a shell.

And addicts made stupid decisions.

So, Jason spent two days shut up in his apartment after he made a promise to Bruce-- a promise it was becoming hard to keep because desire sang to him of the relief it would be to give in.

It was why he found himself-- or rather, left himself-- on the side stoop of the Manor, shaking against the kitchen door in the mid-fall frost. It was Alfred who opened it, as Jason knew he would.

He couldn’t stop shaking even when Alfred somehow got him inside, he puked twice in the sink and even with blankets his teeth chattered and it was not from cold but he couldn’t get the words out for a long time.

It was withdrawal because Jason Todd was an addict and he couldn’t let go of his drug, the anger that festered inside him.

“I have to stop,” Jason said through his clenched jaw, just barely keeping his mouth still enough to speak. And he wanted to, oh, he wanted to-- he wanted calm and evening walks and reading in leather chairs and music during dinner and some script that was not this one, not the legacy of helplessness. But he was an addict.

“I can’t, I can’t.”

“You can,” Alfred said calmly, quietly, wiping his brow with a damp washcloth. “It’s alright. Stay as long as you need.”

Alfred told them later that it was the flu that drove Jason home, but it was an undeserved kindness to shelter him this way.

Jason knew who he was, when he stood sober in the library while the others went out on patrol and his mask gathered dust in the cave.

Jason was an addict, a recovery case.

Jason Todd had broken a promise to himself but he was finding that, much like death, some things could yet be mended.


	6. Jason and Tim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild angst.

“The deploy rate is 27% faster if these numbers are right,” Tim Drake-Wayne said, looking over the equations written in neat lines across the graph paper. “Look over them and double check this, before I start building.”

Jason Todd stood next to the workbench, a scowl deepening on his face with every passing second. The parts of a disassembled grappling hook and a set of tools were strewn across the table surface and Tim held out the notebook toward Jason.

“No,” Jason muttered angrily. “Do your own work, Replacement.”

Tim blinked at him, startled. They’d come a long way in the past few months and it had been a while since Jason had pulled out that nickname, but it flew out of him without thought. The notebook was between them for another moment and then Tim pulled it back with a frown. He turned to the desk, away from Jason, and was quiet.

Inside himself, Jason swore. He sat down at another table and began cleaning one of his guns, one that had been kicking a bit too hard recently.

“I don’t want to waste my time,” Tim said after several minutes. “I wasn’t asking to be nice. I actually want someone to check for errors.”

Jason slammed his hand on the table, irritation surging into rage.

“Get someone else, I don’t care. The grappling hooks you use now are fine.”

The shouting broke something in the atmosphere of the safehouse workshop they often now shared, a place away from the cave and their own apartments to work or recover. Jason glared at Tim until he couldn’t stand the blank look on Tim’s face anymore, the balanced way the kid had of hovering between hurt and anger. The control Tim had felt like a personal insult and Jason felt furious all over, in desperate need of a smoke or some target practice. But he stayed where he was, cleaning a spring with a soft cloth.

If Tim would shout or cry or punch him, then Jason could do something with that, but the kid just sat there, the silence like a magnet. Jason’s attention, even if his eyes were directed toward the gun, couldn’t escape that intentional, words-swallowed quiet. And Jason hated it, hated feeling stupid and judged as reckless or volatile.

“I didn’t go to high school, okay?” he finally snapped at the silence that surrounded Tim, hoping to drive it away. If Tim would just move on, go back to work or get up and leave, then maybe Jason could ignore it and get on with his day.

“What?” Tim asked, spinning now in the chair to look toward Jason again. The notebook was still in his hands.

“Half of freshman year. That was it. I didn’t take algebra or any of that shit,” Jason said, meeting Tim’s gaze for a moment. But there was no pity there, just confusion, and Jason sighed and looked back down at the gun.

“You trained with Bruce,” Tim said faintly, still sounding more uncertain than sad. Jason, at the least, appreciated that. He’d always hated pity. “I watched you throw a knife to where someone was going to be last night, before they were even there. You know this stuff.”

“I know how to fight,” Jason growled, wishing now he’d just lived with the stiff quiet.

“No,” Tim said sharply, a bit of anger in his tone. “No, you know this stuff, Jay. You just don’t know how to write it down. But I can teach you.”

Jason froze.

“I mean, if you…if you want to, you don’t have…it doesn’t have to be…” Tim was stuttering now, backpedaling on this of all things, of all the things he could have dropped or left alone.

“I’d,” Jason swallowed. “I’d appreciate that. I mean, if you can keep your fricking mouth shut.”

“Yeah,” Tim said. “I can.”

And Jason didn’t doubt him.


	7. Babs, Dick, and Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff.

“Beat that, Boy Wonder,” Babs said triumphantly at her phone as she hit send. She looked the word over again, gleefully pleased that she’d had just the right group of letters and was now over thirty points ahead. It wasn’t a huge gap in general, but it was a huge gap considering their games. She dropped the phone in her lap and wheeled herself to the low stove, where eggs were sizzling. The coffee brewed behind her, filling the apartment with the smell of morning even though it was almost ten.

She didn’t expect an answer right away so she was surprised when her phone buzzed only seconds after she picked up the skillet. It was a workday, which meant Dick was likely trying to stay awake during a morning shift after an evening shift on the other side of the law enforcement game.

“EAT DUST” the message in Words with Friends said, along with the notification that he’d played a word that crushed her lead and left her a good forty points behind. She gasped and frowned at the digital game board, feeling suddenly suspicious. She loved the man but he was not that good-- usually they could keep up a fairly close game while she was multi-tasking, while she knew he tended to consider each turn with his full attention.

“Dick Grayson,” she said when he answered the call she’d made on impulse. “Stop cheating.”

“I’m not cheating!” he said with exaggerated hurt and there were the sounds of a busy office in the background. “I’m a little insulted you even think that.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she grinned, flipping the eggs onto a plate. “C’mon. Fess up.”

“I…” he laughed and then sighed. “Fine. I cheated.”

“Hi, Babs,” Bruce said.

So not the police station in the background. Wayne Enterprises.

“Stop helping him!” Babs protested, picking up her favorite mug. It was a handpainted thing from a local pottery place with the Batgirl insignia; Cass had painted it for her.

“He told me he was allowed to ‘phone a friend,’” Bruce protested over the speakerphone.

“Don’t play dumb,” Babs chided. “You know that’s not a thing.”

“It’s a thing!” Dick insisted. “It’s definitely a thing. You’ve done it!”

“I would never!” Babs gasped. “I’ve never needed help with Words with Friends in my life, Richard Grayson.”

“You made Tim play that level of–”

“That was Plants with Zombies!” Babs said, laughing again. “That was entirely different. I’m starting a new game and don’t cheat this time.”

“Fine,” Dick grumbled.

“This is why I don’t play games,” Babs could hear Bruce saying in the background. “Too much drama.”

She was pleased to hear that Dick gasped in unison with her before the call ended.

“Tell Mr. Drama Queen to open an account,” she texted Dick after pouring her coffee. “We’ll thrash him together.”

“As you wish,” Dick sent back within seconds.

Babs ate her breakfast with the dictionary at her elbow and sunlight streaming through the windows. Who said superheroes couldn’t have good days?


	8. Roy, Lian, and Dick

The song in the movie ended with triumphant notes and Roy Harper groggily realized he was still watching the animated musical even though Lian had fallen asleep twenty minutes before. He shook himself as if out of a daze and blinked, looking around the room-- they’d spread a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor in front of the screen and the remnants of dinner were still on the low coffee table behind him.

He looked down at her as she slept curled up against him. Her small face was slack in sleep and drool dripped from one corner of her mouth, her babyish features startling when she was relaxed. There was a pang in his chest as he remembered just how little she still was, no matter how grown-up she seemed or acted during the day. Long lashes cast dancing shadows on her cheeks in the glow from the screen and after giving himself a minute, he gently shifted her to the nest of pillows she’d built and abandoned earlier. 

With a yawn, he climbed to his feet and gathered the plates covered in smears of pizza sauce and salad dressing. He put them all in the big plastic bowl with leftover bits of popcorn, to carry them into the kitchen. 

At the sink, he turned the water on and checked his phone while letting it run to heat up, testing occasionally with his finger. The pipes in this building always took forever. 

Roy was exhausted, a tired ache deep in his bones, but he was also wide awake now after being so drowsy in front of the movie that was still playing in the other room. There were texts from a few of the Titans but most of them were just general chatting that he ignored in favor of the three he’d missed from Dick Grayson:

_ What are u doing, i’m in town _

_ Everything ok? _

_ On my way over but won’t ring bell _

It figured that Dick would just assume something was wrong if he went two hours without answering. Unfortunately, Roy considered with a sigh, the times he’d be incorrect in that assumption were far outweighed by the times it was a good guess. He was just typing a reply when there was a knock on the door.

Roy shut the water off, leaving the dishes for later, and crept through the room toward the door. The noise of the movie helped cover sounds and Lian didn’t stir-- but even if the movie had been off, Roy had some skills that vigilantism had earned him that had their other uses.

“Shh,” he said as he answered the door, motioning with his shoulder. 

Dick Grayson peered around him and nodded.

“Is that Frozen?” he whispered back.

“Don’t judge,” Roy said, realizing a second too late that it was a needless caution.

“I love Frozen,” Dick was already saying. “I don’t have to stay long. I brought cookies from Alfred.”

Roy motioned him in and they retreated together to the kitchen, where Dick set a box on the counter and then looked into the sink.

“Movie night,” Roy said in a whisper. “I almost fell asleep.”

“I’ll wash, you dry,” Dick said, pushing back his sleeves. “And then I’ll go.”

“Or you could stay,” Roy offered, his exhaustion fleeing in the face of some non-crisis-related company. “I’ll put Lian in bed and we can catch up on Lost World of the Warlord.”

“Only if we open those cookies,” Dick bargained. “Alfred wouldn’t let me swipe any on ‘pain of death.’”

“I’ll put some aside for Lian,” Roy grinned, picking up a towel while Dick squeezed soap onto a brush, “And then we can go crazy.”

  
  



	9. Tim and Bruce

Tim Drake-Wayne stood just outside of the large conference room, staring in morosely through the window with a cup of lukewarm coffee in his hand. He’d done his best not to let the activity inside bother him or distract him, but at the end of the workday he found himself lingering there, watching the IRS accountants at work.

The table was stacked high with dozens of files and there were four auditors with laptops out, all typing and checking against lists and folder contents.

“Tim,” Bruce said and Tim whirled so quickly his coffee splashed in the mug.

He hasn’t been avoiding Bruce exactly, but…he’d been avoiding Bruce. Bruce stood next to him and watched through the windows, his hands in his pockets. He looked at ease, not stressed or worried. Tim forgot sometimes how good he was at acting.

“Hey,” Tim ventured after a minute. He swallowed. He might as well get it over with. “Um, I’m, uh, sorry about all this…”

“What?” Bruce looked down at him, one eyebrow slightly lifted.

“The audit,” Tim said. “I mean, I think it’s probably my fault. There must have been something I dropped the ball on when you were, um, busy.”

It wasn’t like anyone was nearby to hear Tim say the word ‘dead,’ but caution was second nature.

Bruce put a hand on Tim’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t you. They just do this sort of thing sometimes. WE doesn’t cut corners and it makes some powerful men angry. I wasn’t much older than you the first time we were randomly audited. Terrified me, too. But it was nothing.”

“Yeah?” Tim said, glancing up at Bruce’s face. Maybe it wasn’t an act. Maybe he really wasn’t worried.

Bruce nodded.

“C’mon. Let’s go grab dinner, just me and you.”

Tim sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Not to sound like a boring old man,” he said, giving Bruce a slightly sheepish smile. “But I was kind of so stressed today that I didn’t get much done? I should probably stay and finish some things.”

Bruce looked at him for a long moment, long enough that Tim wanted to squirm under the scrutiny. Even so, he’d fight for his right to make that decision for himself and stay, age be damned.

“Do you think I’m a boring old man?” Bruce asked, surprising Tim.

“Not really,” Tim said after a second’s thought and a wry look. “You’ve kind of got a nightlife that does a lot to combat that.”

“Let’s order take-out,” Bruce suggested. “I’ll help or just do my best to pester you.”

Tim grinned.

“That sounds great,” he said honestly.

“Maybe a late movie?” Bruce offered next.

Tim narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“What’s the catch?”

Bruce shrugged.

“Maybe I’ve missed you,” he said frankly. “Maybe I left a teenager last year and came back to a young man, and I’m feeling sentimental. Are you really going to turn down a movie and unlimited snacks in an empty theater?”

Tim ducked his head so Bruce wouldn’t see the expression on his face, which he knew would give away way, way too much.

Bruce wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug. Tim nodded after he stepped away.

“That sounds great,” he said. “Really.”

“Lead the way to your office,” Bruce instructed. “This remodel is throwing me off. You know, I tried to take that shortcut to the lab and ended up in a janitor’s closet?”

Tim laughed and walked away from the conference room windows.

“Want me to print you a map, old man?” he teased.

“Don’t patronize me,” Bruce grumbled. “But a map would be nice.”


End file.
